


First Sight

by Nonsuch



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Incest, Parent/Child Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:39:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3729250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonsuch/pseuds/Nonsuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Balem Abrasax has a new baby brother, a brother he would dearly like to destroy. A tale of hatred, manipulation and the happiness that can be won through watertight contracts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Sight

I hated Titus from first sight. He was sleeping in his cradle, perhaps a week—a mere heartbeat—old. He was an affront to me. His features and skin were immaculate, his small body swaddled in silk. The pale blue light of his entitlement mark pulsated through the fabric, indicating the position of his wrist. Though his eyes were closed, I knew they would be large, beautiful and beseeching. Mother had shown me the designs. 

I looked back at her, shuddering when met with her smile. She mocked me from her bed, rising to approach me with slow, lazy movements. Her body was a taunt, her breasts and hips—their shape visible through the sheer fabric of her gown—full and sinuous. She had grown in both beauty and repugnance in the hundred years since I had last seen her. 

I turned from her sharply before she could reach me, looking at the blank wall past the cradle. I tightened my fist as her hand reached for my arm, stroking softly. “Well, what do you make of your brother?” the smile carried through her voice, and I could sense where her eyes were.

“You know what I make of him,” I rasped, hardly able to speak. “He is loathsome.”

“Would you like to kill him?”

I said nothing to that, but my breaths tightened and my eyes lowered to rest on the child. His small face had creased up slightly, his mouth stretching into a yawn before closing again. His lips formed a perfect bow.

“Try. I will not stop you.”

I did not look at her or await further permission. I reached into the crib—for the child’s throat, which was small enough to be constricted between my fingers. My hand hovered for the merest second before I squeezed, only to find that my fingers closed upon empty air. Titus was a mere image. Ignorant of my presence and my intent, his face was beatific in sleep. I withdrew my hand slowly and with as much dignity as I could manage. Mother laughed and moved away, the wispy gauze of her gown catching briefly on my fingers as she padded lazily to the other side of the room. 

“Wine? It’s an excellent vintage. It’s almost as old as you are,” she tittered, and I could hear the glass press to her lips. 

“Where is he?” I continued to look at Titus, or the illusion of Titus. My hands trembled from the need to destroy him.

“In a safe place. A secret place. You will never find him, and you will never see him until I can be sure that you will not harm him.”

“My network spans every system you have a presence in, Mother. I will find and I will kill him; it will merely take time.”

She scoffed. More wine passed down her throat. The glass was returned to the table with a chink. “My network had ten thousand years to grow and strengthen before you were even born. My agents and my plans will always be superior to yours.”

“There are advantages other than time, Mother. You are arrogant.”

“That may be so, but arrogance is a noble weakness. Besides, I am not weak as you are weak, Balem.” She moved towards me, and I closed my eyes. It was futile, for I could not shut out all sensation. Her voice was overpowering with its sweetness. Her fingers made me shiver, subtlety stroking the contours of my exposed throat. Her arms enclosed me, drawing me against her breast, and she whispered just below my ear—her sole disadvantage was her height, and it was rare for her to remind me of it so starkly. She was barefoot and hardly reached my shoulder. “You have missed me, haven’t you?” 

“Yes,” I was helpless, and knew the futility of attempting to lie.

“I missed you as well. But you had your sister, didn’t you? I left you your sister.”

“Yes,” again, I could not lie. Kalique had provided me with some small measure of comfort. The last hundred years had passed more slowly than the preceding two thousand. Without Mother, the Verse had been hollow but for the cold mechanisms of profit.

“That is why I have other children, my darling. The Verse is so vast. You need company. You need your sister, and you will come to need your brother–”

I turned in her arms to look at her, and her voice faltered as we gazed at each other. There was no laughter in her face or on her lips, not now. I gripped her arms, squeezing them far more tightly than she held me. Her eyes were huge and imploring, just as I knew Titus’s would be; she had always longed for a child with her own eyes. I could see my face reflected in them, their sheen highlighting my every imperfection. I had followed no design, and I was no perfect creature. “You are wrong. I need no one but you. We were together, alone, for seventy thousand years. I devoted myself to you; I did everything you asked; I believed everything you asked me to believe. But I wasn’t enough. You still wanted more. You still wanted him.”

“You were not like this when Kalique was born. You liked Kalique. You ought to like Titus.”

“Kalique was no threat to me. Kalique was a complement.”

“And so is Titus. He will never take your place; you will always be my firstborn, my first true love.”

I bent my head to kiss her, the craving unconquerable. She accepted the kiss with a sigh, unflinching when I bit her bottom lip. She offered no passion, no response. She merely allowed it, her manner almost bored. I withdrew, enraged, and shook her with enough force to disturb the elaborate weave of her hair. “You say you love me, but you do not show it. Why will you not show it?” Another shake, this one making her teeth rattle. “Why?”

Her breath came more quickly, strands of her dark hair hanging loose in front of her face. Her eyes shone, and I knew that my violence excited her. “I cannot show my love for you when you would kill my child. As long as you threaten Titus, things can never be as they were. Now let me go.”

I did not. Instead, I squeezed her arms for the pleasure of watching her face subtlety contort in pain.

“Let me go, or I call my guard.” Her excitement faded, eroded by fear. I increased the pressure of my grip.

“I am stronger than you. I could kill you, crush your throat, before you could even call out.” I enunciated the words slowly, fully appreciating how frail she felt for the first time, fascinated by her vulnerability. I could feel the thread of bone resting beneath the skin of her arm, and thought of how easy it would be to break it.

“You could, but is that truly what you want? Would you love me if I were cold? Would you love my corpse?”

I pushed her away and closed my eyes, appalled by the thought of it. She remained still, standing a few feet away from me, until I opened my eyes again; she needed me to watch her. Smoothly regaining her composure, she moved over to the cabinet beside her bed and retrieved her personal sheave. She always carried it with her; Mother had no faith in the spoken word, trusting solely in the sanctity of the contract. “Things can be exactly as they were,” she said, her voice like music, “I will love you again, allow you in my bed. You only need sign.”

“I know your contracts, Mother. You will be the sole beneficiary.”

“I am a mother, Balem. It is not unreasonable for a mother to safeguard her children. And you must think about what you will gain. Kalique is lovely, certainly, but she simply cannot compare. She will never be your mother. She will never be as lovely as me.” She returned to me and passed over the contract, slipping it into my hand before I could refuse. She withdrew as soon as I took it, turning to walk towards her bed. She paused just before it, tugging at a pull and making her gown fall from her body. It pooled at her feet, leaving her bare. She sunk into the bed and stretched lasciviously, regarding me with her cat-like eyes but saying nothing.

Though I knew I was lost, I looked at the contract. Every stipulation was hateful, as hateful as the designed child Mother had dared to make flesh. There was a stipulation that I would not kill Titus. There was a stipulation that I would not encourage or pay others to kill Titus. There was a stipulation that I would not engineer events that would ultimately result in Titus’s death. The contract ran for a hundred and fifty two pages, painstakingly outlining every conceivable condition and scenario. Mother’s lawyers were nothing if not exacting. 

“Know this—no contract will make me care for him.”

“Oh, you will come to care for him. He is such a lovely child—and he is so like me. He has my eyes, you know.”

“Yes,” I said, looking at her as I pressed my wrist to the seal. “I know.”

She beamed at me when I removed my wrist from the sheave, the contract finally executed. “Bring me the sheave, darling. Let me look at it.”

I moved to the bed and handed her the sheave in silence. 

She looked at the sheave carefully before placing it back on the cabinet besides her. She held out her alabaster arms, her eyes beseeching me. “Now, can we love each other again? I so hate to fight with you.”

I looked back at the crib, my hatred undiminished. “I need him gone first.”

“Didn’t you notice?” she dropped her arms and sounded surprised. “He’s been gone since I’ve been in this bed. Look, if you need to be sure.”

I checked the crib and found that she was correct. It was empty, the child having vanished like a nightmare upon waking. When I turned around Mother was resting on the bed, her eyes closed and her body waiting for me. She spoke without looking at me, her lips slightly bent by a smile of contentment. A smile of victory. “Love me, and remind me of why I love you.”

With those words, the torment was eased. With her touch, the years fell away. With her embrace, the utter loneliness of the Verse was forgotten. 

And for a few precious, sacred hours, I remembered what it was to be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably one of the darkest things I've ever written, though I like to think the darkness is justified and in line with what we know about the characters. It's obvious from the movie that Balem holds Titus in disdain, and I wanted to delve into the beginnings of that hatred here. I hope you find this an interesting read, and would love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
